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Zeus, Leto, Olympus

The statuesque goddess was enraged after seeing Bambi’s mother, a sacred deer, being slaughtered by the human hunter. The killer in the cartoon reminded her of the evil monster MacHeath.

Earlier, Artemis was feeling down because she could barely squeeze into her five-thousand-year-old tunic and had to find her new clothes in the big and tall women’s aisle of Walmart. Those shopping trips would be Artemis’ fatal fashion mistake. One muumuu that she tried on, in full view of the security camera that afternoon could have easily tented the Barnum & Bailey Circus including the freak show, concessions, games, the petting zoo and a calliope.

Zeus and Leto often watched Goddesses of Walmart for entertainment. That night they were horrified when they saw their daughter dressed in the giant muumuu while trolling the aisles for deals on chips and soda.

Then the following celestial evening, after 50,300 hits on YouTube the voguish goddess Leto was forced to watch (in shock and horror) a video of her daughter shopping while dressed in a hideous floral nightgown and tennis shoes.

The hotel phone rang.

Bernie picked it up and handed it to Artemis who was eating bon-bons on the couch. “It’s your dad.”

Artemis grabbed the phone. “Daddy?”

The voice on the phone was powerful enough for Bernie to hear every word. The voice was angry enough to generate lightning from the earpiece.

“Artie. Dear Artie. Your mom and I decided that you can’t come home until you lose weight and come to your fashion senses,” daddy Zeus had said. “And tell your hobo friend to hijack himself a new suit with real pants if he’s gonna paint the town with my baby. Bernie’s friend Frankie should have already told him that life’s too short to dress like a bum. And what the hell is that thing you’re drivin’?”

“Uh…” Munch, munch, munch. “Bernie rented a Chia.”

“Everyone up here thinks that you’ve gotten weak and out of control. We can’t afford to have the other deities think that the Olympians are pushovers.” Zeus shouted into the phone. “For gods and goddesses sakes, Art-Art, you used to knock ’em dead.”

“Art-Art?” Bernie heard that and giggled.

The goddess shot lethal optikos (eye) arrows at Bernie. “Shut up, sandal licker! No, not you, daddy. There is going to be an epic battle with MacHeath’s army, so I promised to help out Bernie and his trollop friend.”

Final judgment came to Artemis swiftly in a furious “bolt of rejection.” The bolt was hurled in the form of an angry text, with an angry minotaur emoji attached.

Artemis had just been officially banished from her home and family.

“What family, pop?” she texted back. “Do we even have a family name?”

“Good point, pumpkin. Let me ask your mom,” he wrote.

Back on Olympus, Zeus asked Leto, “Dear? What’s our last name?”

He texted Artemis, “You still there? Okay. Your mom says that our last name is ‘On High.’ We don’t need a last name, pumpkin, unlike the Kardashians. We’re bigger than Lady Gaga. We only use first names. Oh, your mom wants to know…what the hell kind of shoes were you wearing on the Walmart show?”

Zeus’ mighty presence was suddenly gone, and Artemis was hurt, and that meant that she needed tacos.

Artemis had become “an embarrassment” to the fashion-conscious Olympian gods, who were tolerant to a point, often turning their backs on lesser Olympian crimes, such as torture, mass murder, incest, rape, infanticide and eating one’s own children.

“Yes, I did.” Artemis sat up straight and tall. “I’m proud of my job. And it is my duty to defend my sister virgins. Being a goddess is what I do. Sometimes I have to smack filthy men down like mosquitos. Do you think that it’s an easy job? I had to go through all kinds of hell to finally get certified.”

“Certified? You’re kidding,”

Artemis’ tale unfolded. On her first day at Olympus High, she met God, The Big Cheese, who on that day, appeared to her as a popular redheaded cheerleader named Shelly. Shelly helped the tall gawky Artemis get adjusted to campus life. Artemis became the track and field champion at MOWSC, the Mount Olympus West Side College campus. Artemis then ranted on about her life after school. Her “shit jobs” with “shit bosses” and how she dabbled in real estate and interior design in ancient Helena. There was a second time that she ran into, and worked side by side with The Big Cheese in a Naple’s restaurant in 1889. This time he called himself Raffaele Esposito. “It sounded better that plain old God.” When Raffaele invented pizza, he declared that he’d “done enough” for mankind, said, “Fuck it,” and went back to his apartment.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Bernie?” Artemis covered herself with the sheet.

“You were there when God created pizza?”

“Thin crust was my idea. You should try my ricotta gnocchi with sausage and fennel sauce.”

“Marry me!”

“Marry? There are rules. If we are going to marry or mate, I’d have to kill you first. You being a mortal. Alas, it is my sad destiny to run through the heavens, alone, unfulfilled, and nearly naked…”

“Stop!”

“…for all time. As Artemis continued her sad tale of struggle—hands over her breasts, to the weak-willed Bernie, he, through all-American know-how and due diligence, had managed to sneak his right hand beneath a lifetime supply of generous ass cheek. “You’re kidding about the pizza, right?”

“Kidding? I never kid. Do you dare to challenge the huntress? And move your hands away from my κώλος before I…Bernie? Do you think I’m getting too…uh, soft? Am I becoming a pillow princess? I heard someone called that on TV.” Artemis started to tie her tunic over her shoulder.

“No. You’re the most perfect being I’ve ever seen. Please. Don’t put all of that cool stuff away…”

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Bernie ‘The God Whisperer’ is taking a stroll, minding his own f*cking business, on an unusually warm December night in Cleveland, when this bullsh*t happens >>>>>

There were bicycle lights approaching him from the corner. An attractive silvery haired couple, dressed in spiffy casual wear, wheeled up to the curb, smiled with perfect teeth and stopped.

“Where in Hades have you been?” the beautiful silver-haired woman said to Bernie as she swiped at him with her freshly manicured nails, tearing the collar of his cheap Hawaiian shirt.

“Hey, What the?”

“Art thou Cupcaecius?” asked her handsome executive-type companion with the obligatory sweater tied around his neck. They both looked as though they’d just ridden off the cover of every other issue of Molten Silver magazine.

“No!” Bernie backed into a rubbish can and fell. Who were these two new gods with a healthy active lifestyle?

Leto pulled her bike onto the pavement and bent down toward a display in the hotel’s gift shop window. “Look, Zeus! It’s a darling car charm. It looks just like Artie’s little car! That’s cute.” Leto looked down at the pathetic human cowering on the sidewalk. “Is that real sapphire?” she asked.

“Are you asking me, m-m-m-ma’am?” Bernie looked up at the the woman wide-eyed. Leto winked at him and whispered. “You can call me Λητώ, or Λατώ.”

“Zeus and Leto?” He bowed his head in respect. “Artie, I mean Artemis told me that you’d banished her from Olympus.”

“Human!” Without warning, Leto grabbed Bernie by his nose. “Listen to thy husband, Waffle of Dung!”

I’ve managed to piss off Zeus and Leto.

Zeus pointed a finger and zapped Bernie’s trap with a tiny lightning bolt. Bernie doubled over onto the pavement then smiled when he’d realized that yet another strand on the human-proof trap had snapped. Only the gods have the power to remove this thing.

Thus spoke Zeus: “Buying my daughter cheap trinkets will not make her more beautiful. It is because of her that ‘things’ become beautiful. That is the generous nature of a goddess.”

“Owwwww,” croaked Bernie as he pulled himself to his feet by grabbing the bricks on the wall. They act like they’ve been smokin’ incense.

Zeus spoketh again: “You’ve seen Artemis improve the luster of a diamond, the scent of a gardenia and the spirit of the untamed sea. How much proof of the divine doth thou needest, Bernie?”

“Your daughter ith, I mean is amazing.”

“Artemis must remain pure,” said Leto. “Junk food! Television! A girl her age should be hunting across the heavens instead of twiddling…thumbs…with you.”

“Twiddling? We haven’t twiddled any thumbs. How old is Artie?” asked Bernie.

Leto stopped his cruel hand. “Stop. What my husband should explain to you, you bug, is that the twiddling of thumbs is the way we profess our love on Olympus. If Artemis twiddled with you, we are obliged to spare your miserable life. However, if we find out that you two have twaddled, we will kill you a thousand times in a thousand ways. And to answer your question, our virrrrrgin daughter is five thousand, give or take a hundred years,” said Zeus.

Five thousand years. And no boinky-woinky? Bernie thought.

“What my husband is trying to say is—what did I just hear you think, young man? ‘Boinky-woinky?’”

“Five thousand years?” Bernie asked again.

“Maybe this upstart needs me to sling a bolt of lightning up his κώλος,” said Zeus.

“No, Zuzu,” said Leto.

“Psssst! Don’t call me that,” Zeus snapped back.

She calls her husband, the ruler of Olympus, Zuzu? Thought Bernie, trying not to laugh out loud.

“Lightning! That’s my husband’s solution for everything. So, Bernie, do you know the damage you have done to our daughter with the bad food and her clothes?”

“What did I do to her clothes? I have no control over the goddess. She loves to shop and eat.”

“She is wearing, thanks to your flea-bag cat, a handful of white downy feathers, placed in three strategic locations, upon splashes of perfumed garlic infused olive oil given to her by your cat, Bomba!”

“For your plebeian amusement, I imagine,” added Zeus.

Her curves oiled and writhing, succulent and wearing a handful of feathers. And no boinky for five thousand years. The two Olympian gods could hear every dirty thought.

“Writhing! You worm! I shall slay you!” said Leto.

Zeus blocked his wife’s right arm from smiting. “I am only going to spare you because Artemis swore to protect you. Our daughter, is pure, Mr. Cake. Purity is what she does.”

“This relationship wasn’t my idea,” said Bernie. “I think that you should talk to her pal, Dauna,”

“Who?” asked Leto.

“Dauna, the shark goddess from Kupaio,” said Bernie. “She asked your daughter to watch over me. Have you two met Soapy Puppies, I mean Her Sauciness? She is what you might call a bad influence. Peligro—ow!”

“What dost thou think, Zuzu!” said Leto.

Bernie switched gears, from suppressing pain to suppressing a major guffaw.

“Remember the wedding that we couldn’t go to in Fiji, dearest? The one we sent Artemis to?”

Leto turned to Bernie. “I wish we could have gone to the pre-wedding party with the mbolo worm buffet. I love worms. We had the nosoi flu at the time, Bernie. You must have heard of Dauna. What do you know about her all-knowing-all-seeing-all-fucking, Zuzie.”

Is Zeus sweating? thought Bernie. Zuzie! Don’t laugh.

“Oh, yes. You mean Daucina. That Dauna!” said Zeus, “is just your average goddess, dear. A nobody.”

“Oh, I remember,” said Leto. “The oracles spoke of her. ‘The steamy one with a mouth like a pigsty gutter who spoketh offenses from the pools of the god Cess, and a great set of cans.’”

“The poor thing suffers from Tourette Syndrome,” explained Zeus. “She may come on like a gluttonous eater of slack serpents, but she’s harmless. I checked.”

“Thou hast checked thine trollop, Zuzu?” asked the angry Leto.

Bernie was forced to jump in. “Dauna is not a trollop, great goddess! She’s just …uh, friendly. Yeah, that’s it. Friendly.”